A Pushcart at the Curb Part 11

They eat out of copper bowls beside the fire in silence.

They loose the hobbles from the knees of their camels and shout as they jerk to their feet.

The yellow man rides west.

The brown man rides east.

Their songs trail among the split rocks of the desert.

Sings the yellow man:

I have heard men sing songs of how in the scarlet pools that spurt from the sun trodden like a grape under the feet of darkness a woman with great b.r.e.a.s.t.s bathes her nakedness.

Sings the brown man:

After a thousand days of cramped legs flecked with green s...o...b..r of dromedaries she awaits me lean with desire pallid with dust sinewy naked before her.

Their songs fade in the empty desert.

III

There was a king in China.

He sat in a garden under a moon of gold while a black slave scratched his back with a back-scratcher of emerald.

Beyond the tulip bed where the tulips were stiff goblets of fiery wine stood the poets in a row.

One sang the intricate patterns of snowflakes One sang the henna-tipped b.r.e.a.s.t.s of girls dancing and of yellow limbs rubbed with attar.

One sang red bows of Tartar hors.e.m.e.n and whine of arrows and blood-clots on new spearshafts The others sang of wine and dragons coiled in purple bowls, and one, in a droning voice recited the maxims of Lao Tse.

(Far off at the walls of the city groaning of drums and a clank of ma.s.sed spearmen.

Gongs in the temples.)

The king sat under a moon of gold while a black slave scratched his back with a back-scratcher of emerald.

The long gold nails of his left hand twined about a red tulip blotched with black, a tulip shaped like a dragon's mouth or the flames bellying about a paG.o.da of sandalwood.

The long gold nails of his right hand were held together at the tips in an att.i.tude of discernment: to award the tulip to the poet of the poets that stood in a row.

(Gongs in the temples.

Men with hairy arms climbing on the walls of the city.

They have red bows slung on their backs; their hands grip new spearshafts.)

The guard of the tomb of the king's great grandfather stood with two swords under the moon of gold.

With one sword he very carefully slit the base of his large belly and inserted the other and fell upon it and sprawled beside the king's footstool.

His blood sprinkled the tulips and the poets in a row.

(The gongs are quiet in the temples.

Men with hairy arms scattering with taut bows through the city; there is blood on new spearshafts.)

The long gold nails of the king's right hand were held together at the tips in an att.i.tude of discernment.

The geometrical glitter of snowflakes, the pointed b.r.e.a.s.t.s of yellow girls crimson with henna, the swirl of river-eddies about a barge where men sit drinking, the eternal dragon of magnificence....

Beyond the tulip bed stood the poets in a row.

The garden full of spearshafts and shouting and the whine of arrows and the red bows of Tartars and trampling of the sharp hoofs of war-horses.

Under the golden moon the men with hairy arms struck off the heads of the tulips in the tulip-bed and of the poets in a row.

The king lifted the hand that held the flaming dragon-flower.

Him of the snowflakes, he said.

On a new white spearshaft the men with hairy arms spitted the king and the black slave who scratched his back with a back-scratcher of emerald.

There was a king in China.

IV

Says the man from Weehawken to the man from Sioux City as they jolt cheek by jowl on the bus up Broadway: --That's her name, Olive Thomas, on the red skysign, died of c.o.ke or somethin'

way over there in Paris.

Too much money. Awful immoral the lives them film stars lead.

The eye of the man from Sioux City glints in the eye of the man from Weehawken.

Awful ... lives out of sky-signs and l.u.s.t; curtains of pink silk fluffy troubling the skin rooms all prinkly with chandeliers, bed cream-color with pink silk ta.s.sles creased by the slender press of thighs.

Her eyebrows are black her lips rubbed scarlet b.r.e.a.s.t.s firm as peaches gold curls gold against her cheeks.

She dead all of her dead way over there in Paris.

O golden Aphrodite.

The eye of the man from Weehawken slants away from the eye of the man from Sioux City.

They stare at the unquiet gold dripping sky-signs.

PHASES OF THE MOON

I

Again they are plowing the field by the river; in the air exultant a smell of wild garlic crushed out by the s.h.i.+ning steel in the furrow that opens softly behind the heavy-paced horses, dark moist noisy with fluttering of sparrows; and their chirping and the clink of the harness chimes like bells; and the plowman walks at one side with sliding steps, his body thrown back from the waist.

O the sudden sideways lift of his back and his arms as he swings the plow from the furrow.

And behind the river sheening blue and the white beach and the sails of schooners, and hoa.r.s.ely laughing the black crows wheel and glint. Ha! Haha!

Other springs you answered their laughing and shouted at them across the fallow lands that smelt of wild garlic and pinewoods and earth.

This year the crows flap cawing overhead Ha! Haha!

and the plow-harness clinks and the pines echo the moaning sh.o.r.e.

No one laughs back at the laughing crows.

No one shouts from the edge of the new-plowed field.

_Sandy Point_